In final stages of releasing iter 11, most likely sometime Sunday (so over 24 hours). Few minor tweaks left as well as – creating the installer, updating the website – creating screen shots and videos.

Had a play through tonight, its been a while since I played this long and with the focus on taking over the enemy base. Thoughts: it shouldn’t be very surprising that I like the game I’m making, but still it is a welcome feeling for me. The art has improved dramatically, very pleasing and rewarding to the eye (and I hope a “hook” to the player – just one more ship to destroy… feeling). Overall very stable, though I encountered (and fixed) a crash bug – having to do with the “Command” ability on the Command ship which lets you take over enemy ships.

At first the game is seemingly very easy because resources are plentiful, but once you build stations and start to want to build the marine frigate ships to take over the enemy base resources start to become more scarce and enemy attacks intensify. One of the the goal is for the game to be a challenge, but also hard to lose, and this is somewhat the case.

Right now however the game is too much waiting for resources and not enough of substancial combat. One of the reasons being is that enemies are mostly equipped with corvette class ships, while the player can build powerful frigate class ships as well as having the Command ship. Its not very fair to the enemy. I’ve removed the heavier hitting enemy ships because their art was placeholders, so while the enemy suffers the look and feel of the game improves. A good trade off I’d say.

The other reason is that the game is very simplistic, the enemy base AI is very unsophisticated, and really just throws wave after wave of ships. This will be remedied, the goal is to have complex encounters, missions and objectives. Bases will need to be weakened, defenses will need to be strenghtened, territory will change hands, battles fought and wars waged. And because (I feel) that the game is already fun… I’m very optimistic about the future.